A story of British expatriate social mobility and sexuality in the Middle East Nineteenth century social history is populated by men (mostly) driven by the self-improvement ethos who emerged from humble circumstances to relative wealth and status. Such historical rags to riches stories attract intrinsic interest. They make persuasive illustrations for arguments about … Continued
Made in Swindon: a social history 1840s -1940s was published in May this year by Hobnob Press. It is edited by Philip Garrahan, Emeritus Professor at Sheffield Hallam University, and has six contributing authors. See: https://www.hobnobpress.co.uk/books/p/made-in-swindon-a-social-history-1840s-1950s-edited-by-philip-garrahan It also can be ordered from local bookshops or online from, for example, Waterstones:- https://www.waterstones.com/book/made-in-swindon/philip-garrahan/9781914407888 Royalties from the book … Continued
Kate Brooks’ Critical Histories in Care and Education published earlier this year by Routledge (also available as an ebook) explores the entangled histories of the care system and the development of the English education systems. Aimed at undergraduates and postgraduates, including those in Education, Care, Social Studies and Cultural History, the book is also written … Continued
Sarah Roddy’s Money and Irish Catholicism: An Intimate History, 1850-1921, which is out in e-book format now and will be released imminently in hard copy by Cambridge University Press, examines the finances of the Irish Catholic Church between the end of the Famine and the advent of Irish independence. This was a period when the … Continued
Rebekah Higgitt r.higgitt@nms.ac.uk Jasmine Kilburn-Toppin Kilburn-ToppinJ@cardiff.ac.uk with Noah Moxham When you think of scientific activity in seventeenth century London your thoughts probably turn to learned societies and their experiments, like those conducted by the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, witnessed by gentleman natural philosophers. Our book Metropolitan Science suggests that such learned, … Continued
Michael Ward’s Unceasing War on Poverty is the first comprehensive biography of both the Webbs for forty years. It draws extensively on Beatrice’s diaries and on a wide range of other material. Beatrice Potter and Sidney Webb came from opposite ends of the Victorian middle class. Beatrice was one of the nine daughters of Richard … Continued
Social history can slip through the cracks of the floorboards and, if we are not careful, be easily lost. Such, I fear, is the case with the lives and times of the rural posties who were phased out by Royal Mail in the late 1960s and early 1970s without any fanfare or proper thank you … Continued
Mary Fraser, University of Glasgow mary.fraser.2@glasgow.ac.uk This so far untold story of the release of policemen into agriculture during the last two years of the First World War was a surprise! 1917 was the year of war weariness, when nothing seemed to go well for Britain: blockading started in earnest from February, a severe … Continued
Waltraud Ernst, Oxford Brookes University wernst@brookes.ac.uk Thomas Müller, Ulm University th.mueller@zfp-zentrum.de This new book addresses one of the central debates in the history of alcohol and intoxication: the supposed ‘medicalisation’ of alcohol use from the nineteenth century onwards. The editors argue that many cultures understood the link between overconsumption of intoxicating beverages and the deterioration … Continued
Dr Howard Webber, independent scholar hwebber@metronet.co.uk You can learn a lot about the strength of a movement by looking at its opponents. It became clear that the wonderfully named League of Audiences was worth a deeper look when I discovered that T S Eliot had devoted an essay to dissing it. The League of Audiences … Continued
